Music & Culture

His songs could sound tortured, weary, angry, knowing, defiant. But Tom Petty's music also possessed a great capacity for hard-won warmth.

Tom Petty's recorded legacy spans nearly 50 years — from classic-rock standards to deep cuts that hit hard. Hear a crowd-sourced playlist and read reminiscences from the NPR Music staff.

Petty, who died Monday night, spoke with Terry Gross in 2006 about the seeds of his Hall Of Fame career: "We always wanted very much to create our own sound."

Listen back to an interview and performance from the late rocker, plus a conversation about his influences.

In the first song from Mimicking Birds' forthcoming Layers of Us, the band unleashes an irresistibly spaced-out stunner.

Caleb Keeter, a guitarist for the Josh Abbott Band, says, "my biggest regret is that I stubbornly didn't realize it until my brothers on the road and myself were threatened by it."

The track is a blurt of jolting joy that opens with a welcome exclamation — "Good morning!" — before rumbling through two minutes of sunny menace.

Unhinged love is manifested in bright colors and plastic surgery in a video for St. Vincent's thumping electro-rock track.

Tei Shi's red thigh-highs weren't a deliberate reference to Britney Spears' iconic jumpsuit but, she admits, it may have been a subconscious one.

In the new animated video, the emcee critiques how society socializes us from innocent adolescents to lost, even monstrous adults.